Weeks before my oldest child?s first birthday, I was incredibly stressed. It wasn?t the party that had me hyperventilating; it was the cake. My son had never tasted cake. Or cookies. Or candy. Or chocolate. He dined on homemade spinach quiche and organic, made-from-scratch root-vegetable purées (with a dash of nutmeg). While I ate chocolate treats regularly, I gave him pumpernickel bread to make him think we were eating the same thing (babies are so gullible?he also believed that his shoes were real Gucci). I had worked so hard to make sure everything that touched his little lips was nutrient dense and sugar-free. He was pure and untainted?that is, unless you count the nine months he spent in utero, where about 70 percent of what was offered up via umbilical cord was chocolate. I worried that the minute my little healthy eater tasted cake, there would be no turning back. Why would he ever want to eat anything else" I researched virtuous, sugar-free cupcake recipes and agonized. Eventually, I decided to make whole wheat, low-sugar chocolate cupcakes (due to serious lobbying efforts from Big Chocolate, a.k.a. my mom). I watched breathlessly as he took an enthusiastic bite and smiled. Then he put the cupcake down and ate watermelon, and things pretty much went back to normal.
I don?t know when it changed. A bite here, a piece of birthday cake there. My oldest went from not caring about his own birthday cake to consistently being the only one left at the table still eatin...